Church membership is biblical, theologians say, despite cultural headwinds

NASHVILLE (BP) — Church membership has fallen on hard times, and Jonathan Leeman has watched the decline.

“We tend to have a me-and-Jesus view,” in which “the church is a nice option” and a “pragmatic help” but “not, strictly speaking, necessary,” said Leeman, president of 9Marks, a ministry that helps build healthy churches. An “internet culture” that replaces church attendance with watching preachers online also “chips away” at church membership, as does “theological anemia” that dispenses with any facet of the Christian life not essential for salvation.

But Leeman sees hope for recovering biblical church membership, where members comprise, as the Baptist Faith and Message puts it, “an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel.”

“People recognize the thin gruel that individualistic Christianity offers to enduring and growing in the faith,” he said. “You just don’t grow apart from other Christians. Christians recognize that, and they find joy, meaning and growth as they unite together with other believers.”

With American culture drifting from church membership, recovery of biblical church membership is vital, say Leeman and other advocates of Baptist ecclesiology. The Bible teaches that every follower of Jesus, they say, should join a specific local body of believers that preaches the Gospel, practices church discipline and observes the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Better than Costco membership

Church membership’s decline has been a long time in the making. Nearly three-quarters of Americans (73 percent) were church members in 1937, and that figure held steady at approximately 70 percent for the next six decades, according to Gallup polling. It dropped to 62 percent by 2010 and 49 percent by 2020.

Most of the decline in church membership occurred among religious Americans. Seventy-three percent who claimed to be religious belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque in 2000, according to Gallup. That dropped to 60 percent in 2020. The age of churchless Christianity had arrived.

Previous generations of Baptists attempted to recover biblical church membership. Baptist theologian John L. Dagg wrote in his 1858 “Manual of Church Order” that the contemporary practice of admitting “nonconverted members” to churches was “a step, not in the direction of God’s progressive development, but in a direction backward.” He advocated churches “composed of persons truly converted to God.”

But is the recovery of robust church membership still possible after more than 150 years of additional decline beyond what Dagg observed? Leeman thinks so. He believes Christians who study the issue with an open Bible will be persuaded that a congregation with a membership roll is scriptural.

A defined membership is presumed in Matthew 18:17 and 1 Corinthians 5:2, where churches are commanded to remove sinning people. “Remove them from what?” Leeman asked. “Well, from membership in the church.”

Acts 2:41 references 3,000 baptized people being “added to them,” a reference to the Jerusalem church, Leeman said. The command in Hebrews 13:17 that believers obey and submit to their leaders implies a defined congregation with defined leaders. First Corinthians 10:17 teaches that the Lord’s Supper should be observed by a defined local church.

Additionally, “there is a clear organization that the New Testament gives for the local assembly,” said Dwayne Milioni, a North Carolina pastor and chairman of the board at the Pillar Network, a Baptist organization that equips, plants and revitalizes churches. The church’s organization, according to Philippians 1:1, includes defined members, “overseers” and “deacons.”

New Testament references to the church as a “household,” “brothers and sisters” and sheep shepherded by a pastor also imply a defined membership, said Milioni, pastor of Open Door Church in Raleigh, N.C. “I don’t think there is any doubt that there is what I would call very meaningful membership in the New Testament church.”

Recovering meaningful church membership falls significantly to pastors, Milioni said. To shepherd properly, pastors must determine precisely who is on their membership rolls. That means congregations should not vote to add members too quickly before church leaders can talk with them about their salvation, baptism and desire to covenant with the particular local church in question.

The requirement of meaningful church membership also means churches should remove people from their rolls at times rather than classifying them as inactive members, he said.

Pastors “are going to be held accountable for everybody who is on our roll,” Milioni said. “God forbid that we have to stand before Jesus one day, and Jesus is going to say, ‘Hey, there are several hundred people that were on your church roll but you did nothing with. You didn’t shepherd them at all.’”

The deemphasis of church membership likely indicates that some Christians misunderstand it, Leeman said.

“They are looking for something like country club membership or maybe Costco membership,” he said. “There is a payment of dues, and there is a signing of something. It’s all very programmatic. That’s not what the New Testament gives us. Rather, when it speaks about membership, it uses all those beautiful images like a flock, a body, a household or family.”

The North American Mission Board (NAMB) is doing its part to recover biblical church membership, including training each church planter on the doctrine of the church.

“As part of the process, we have planters interview other church planters and their sending church’s pastor to gather real-world perspectives on applying biblical principles and on what healthy membership looks like,” said Noah Oldham, NAMB’s vice president of Send Network Operations. “We also provide sample membership covenants for reference. From there, each planter outlines their own membership class process, approach to conducting member interviews and plan for implementing membership life, tailored to their specific church context.”

‘Give us a try’

Not everyone in Southern Baptist life agrees on the importance of a defined local church membership.

Cameron Schweitzer, associate professor of historical theology at Gateway Seminary, agrees that church membership is “implied throughout the New Testament” and “a helpful way of creating some semblance of accountability.” However, “there is not an explicit chapter and verse in Thessalonians or Romans where Paul is going to say, ‘You all should have church membership.’” That leads Schweitzer to conclude churches without defined members are biblically permissible.

Among congregations with valid church order are Calvary Chapel congregations, he said, which have no membership rolls but define as part of their spiritual family anyone who regularly attends and has trusted Christ as Lord and Savior. Calvary Chapel congregations generally lack voting lists or membership processes.

One Virginia Calvary Chapel congregation states on its website, “We do not practice church membership and we will never ask you to ‘join’ Calvary Chapel. The church is a family to which you belong when you are ‘born again’ as a believer.”

“There are some Calvary Chapels becoming Southern Baptist in California” while maintaining their Calvary Chapel ecclesiology, Schweitzer said, adding that the secular context of California prompts Gospel-preaching believers to cooperate and not place undue emphasis on nuances of church order.

The California Southern Baptist Convention confirmed to Baptist Press that some Calvary Chapel congregations in California have begun to cooperate with the SBC.

“Being a native Californian,” Schweitzer said, I “appreciate what Southern Baptists are like in other parts of the country, but there is a different experience that Southern Baptists have here in California.”

Leeman and Milioni see it differently. Recovery of robust church membership, they say, is not only a biblical requirement but also a blessing.

“Assurance is one of those beautiful benefits we get from church membership,” Leeman said. In addition to looking inward in self-examination and backward to their baptisms, believers “can also look around. Don’t you realize that the 250 other members who received you and affirmed you as a member” are saying, “Yes, we think [you] are a Christian”?

Milioni added that believers “don’t get all the privileges that are described in the Bible if you refuse to submit yourself to the authority of the local church.” Those privileges include “the care of shepherds,” the ability “to carry one another’s burdens” and participating in a spiritual family with opportunities to serve and give.

“The good Gospel order that God has placed in the local church is wonderful,” he said, adding, “Give us a try.”